
I 




ra 

e Ceatljings of tjje Crisis, 
ADDRESS , ^> 



DELIVERED IN 



ST, PAUL'S CHURCH, CAMDEN, N. J., 



ON THE OCCASION OP 



THE FUNERAL 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



April 19, 1865. 



Rev. J. F. GARRISON. ^\. 



SECOND EDITION. 



CAMDViN, N. J. : 

INTEl) BY S. CHEW, AT TRE OFFICE OF THE '' WEST JERSEY I'RESS. 
1865. 



®|e Stadjtiigs of i\t Crisis. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED IS 



ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, CAMDEN, ^, J. 



ON THE OCCASION OF 



THE FUNERAL 



ABEAHAM LINCOLN, 



^pril lO, I860. 



Eev. J. F. GAREISON, M. D. 



SECOND EDITION. 



CAMEXEN, N. J. : 

PRINTED BY S. CHEW, AT THE OFFICE OF TUE " WEST JERSEY PRESS." 

18G5. 






r:.v. 



"With niallcp towards none, irith charity for all, irlth Jirmnexs hi the 
rif/Jit as God gives us to see the rU/ht, let ns strife on to finisTi the work 
■tve are in, to bind «i> the Nation's tvounds, to care for him who sJiall have 
borne tJie battle, and for his widow and orphans, to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with 
all Kations." [From Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural.] 




St. Paul's Ciiuncii, Camden, April 20, 1865. 
Rev. J. F. GARRISON, 

Deak Sir :— Tho subscribers, members of the Vestry and 
others, listened with great satisfaction to the sermon preached by you on the occasion 
( f the funeral services on the death of President Lincoln. We but give expression 
to a general wish for a wider circulation of this sermon, in asking a copy for 
publication. 



0. 11. Taylor, 
T. P. Carpenter, 
RoBT. B. Potts, 
P. J. Gray, 
J. R. DuNHAJr, 
Azael Roberts, 
M. B. Taylor, 
J. N. Troth, 
Maurice Browning, 
Geo. S. Wardwell, 
Wm. E. Lapferty, 



Chas. p. Stratton, 
W. D. Cooper, 
Henry Ackley, 
H. Genet Taylor, 
S. H. Grey, 
Joshua L. Howell, 
T. Chas. Merry, 
Jno. R. Stevenson, 
Clinton M. Ackerman, 
F. B. Odrnheimer, 
S. C. Harbert, 



Camden, April 21, 18fi5. 
Gentlemen :—Yonr favor of the 20th inst., requesting the publication of the 
adlress delivered on tho occasion of the funeral service of President Lincoln, is 
before me. 

Hoping that it may be useful, at this great crisis, in what I believe to be the cause 
of " God and our Country," I place the manuscript which you request, at your disposal. 
Very Respectfully Yours, 

J. F. GARRISON. 
Messrs. 0. II. Taylor, 

T. P. Carpenter, 

R. B. Potts, 

S. H Grey, 

Wm. D. Cooper, &c., &c. 



®j)e ®eHtl)ings of tlje Crisis 



HEBEEWS XI : 6. 



He being Dead yet Speaketh." 



A nation is to-day assembled for a funeral. And never, 
save wlien God himself laid Moses in the valley of Beth- 
Peor, had mortal man so grand a burial. There have 
been larger piles of stone heaped up than we shall rear for 
our murdered President; there may have been more of 
the pomp and circumstance of gilded majesty around, and 
on the bier ; but never before was man laid in his tomb, 
wdth twenty millions of true hearted sorrowers standing 
by to do him honor. A nation gathers at the grave, and 
the sad tokens, and yet sadder ceremonials have spread a 
pall of mourning over half a continent. In every Town 
and City, in every Church and hamlet, there is a throng- 
ing to the funeral ; it l)cgan on the cold :N'ew England 
hills, where the spring violets have not yet peeped beside 
the winter snow, it moves on down through the great 
cities of the seaboard States, a thousand miles across the 



Alleglianies, along the great Father of Waters, far away 
over the distant prairies, only to cease where no flash of 
the magic telegraph can carrj' its sad tidings farther ; and 
then, for days, weeks after, these will come, one by one, 
into the solitary homes of remote settlers in the wilder- 
ness, and make them all the more sorrowful, that they 
could not have had the sad joy of mingling their sorrow 
in the great ocean of the nation's grief. But more im- 
pressive, even, than the mighty host who gather around, is 
the- tribute of the feeling which has brought them here; 
the nation is not assembled for this vast solemnity as a 
mere looker-on, to share the mourning of a stricken few; the 
nation is itself the mourner. It mourns the man; it mourns 
the President ; men feel it as an individual sorrow, as well 
as a national calamity ; and they have reason to do both. 

Called to the Presidential Chair at the most momentous 
crisis in the history of the country, Aeraiiam Lincoln had 
a task entrusted to his charge, such as God has seldom 
given to the lot of man. He found the nation tottering on 
the verge of anarchy and hojjeless ruin ; treason had 
paralyzed the government ; its treasury was bare ; its 
navy scattered ; its army unavailable ; Rebels had already 
entrenched themselves within its forts, driven out their 
garrisons, seized their stores and armaments, had robbed 
its mints, defied its officers, and equipped their soldiers 
in the plundered munitions of its arsenals ; And thus, 
with traitors swarming in every department, and sympa- 
thizers with the rebels — if not with the rebellion — all over 
the nation, Mr. Lincoln took on him the immense, the 
terrible responsibilities of the Presidential office. Untried 
in higher statesmanship, unknown among the leading 
names who were regarded as the thinkers of the nation. 



with less of means, and more of peril thau ever man was 
called to undertake so great a work before, lie set himself 
to enter on his duties. The tempest which had been so 
long gathering burst, and what a storm ! — who that lived 
through it, ever can forget that fearful morning, when the 
news thrilled through the land from Sumter, that traitor 
hands had plunged the nation into the fiery hell of civil war? 

How eagerly, how achingly, doubtingly, almost despair- 
ingly, all eyes were turned toward the President. Would 
he be equal to the emergency ? Had he the nerve ? The 
wisdom ? Was he, untried and inexperienced, the man 
to guide the nation in this hour of peril ? It was a time 
to test the very uttermost of all that is in a character, and 
Mr. Lincoln met it in a spirit equal to the time. I know 
not anywhere in all the records of great governors and 
statesmen, a higher, nobler sentiment, than the concluding 
sentence of his first message to the special Congress of 
1861, and after events have shown, that this was the 
spoken impress of his real nature : " Having thus chosen 
" our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us 
" renew our trust in God, and go forward, without fear, 
" and with manly hearts." 

On the fierce conflict raged, and he did " go forward." 
He had to prepare an army, to fill a treasury, to create a 
na^^', to hold down factious malcontents at home, to 
ward off threatened intervention from abroad, to build 
up credit when ever}-thing seemed crumbling into ruin, 
to save the nation's hfe when all was dark within, and all 
without was cheerless. Everything was to be done at 
once; each several thing was imperatively needed at the 
instant; there were no precedents ; no one had any knowl- 
edge or exi)crience : his soldiers were undisciplined civil- 



ians ; liis ministers -antanglit, and ignorant in the immense, 
unprecedented duties of their new position ; hut in all these 
discouragements, with all these dangers, he never wavered, 
never faltered, nor despaired : through many long, dark 
months — years they appeared to us — of toil and painful 
agony, order hegan to grow out of chaos, and light to 
hreak upon the darkness. And he not only huilt his navy, 
hut used it so efficiently, that before he died, it rode in 
triumph over every fortressed harbor from Cape Henry to 
the Rio Grande ; and he so wrought his armies to the 
work they were to do, that ere he passed away, he saw 
their banners wave victorious in the capital of treason, and 
knew the mightiest forces of the Rebellion all broken or 
surrendered before their serried columns. What enemies 
had long pronounced impossible, was gradually done ; 
what half, or whole sympathizers with the rebels, had 
tauntingly paraded with derisive jeers, as hopeless 
barriers were swept or worn away. 

And although, on many points of governmental policy 
there were wide differences of opinion, although, as must 
ever be the case where so many and so complicated ques- 
tions are at issue, his principles of constitutional interpreta- 
tion were disputed, yet day by day his hold grew stronger 
on the nation's heart, his place more settled in the people's 
confidence, and never did he stand so high in almost uni- 
versal estimation, as just at the moment of his death, when, 
in the very flush and glory of the triumphant progress of 
his armies, he showed a noble magnanimity of soul to- 
wards the vanquished, which stands as solitary in the his- 
tory of rebellions, as our Republic does among the family 
of nations. He needed but one honor more, to write his 
name upon the topmost scroll of earthly immortality ; and 



when lie died, a victim to tlic traitor's hate towards the 
nation he had loved, and saved, that honor was awarded ; 
and he who ranked hefore among that high historic names 
of human glory, will henceforth stand among the higher, 
chosen few, who are deemed worthy to he martyrs for the 
cause of right. It rohs him of a few short years of troul )led 
life. It consecrates him to the never-dying reverence of a 
nation's loving honor. 

But great as was the work performed by Abraham 
Lincoln in the deliverance of this nation from the threat- 
ened danger of its anarchy and ruin, his place in history will 
not he hounded by the narrow limits of one nation's 
gratitude ; his name will mark, throughout all after time, 
one of the epochs, from which the world will date the 
opening of a new era in the onward progress of God's 
providential leadings of the race of man. Two facts in 
human history are linked inseparably, with the name and 
work of Abraham Lincoln, and by them " he being dead 
yet speaketh." The first was demonstrated by his life ; 
the second was established in his death. 

I. The history of this country under the Administration 
of Mr. Lincoln, has demouvstrated beyond reasonable cavil, 
the capacity and fitness of a people for self-government. 
This was the problem given our nation to decide ; so we 
have understood it ; so has it been unc\prstood, and can- 
vassed by the world without. 

Those who desired that government should bo admin- 
istered for the blessing of the people, and not fl>r the main- 
taining of a caste, have looked to us to show the world 
that this was possible, and was actually done ; the bur- 
dened and starving masses who have o;roaned for some 



10 

place of refuge, where tliej miglit give their children bread 
and feel themselves were men, have thanked God when 
they heard what our land was doing, and with one 
heart turn here, as to the only hope on earth, of the op- 
pressed and destitute ; and those who have for ages ruled 
the world on the acknowledged principle, 

" Thus it hath been, shall be, beneath the Sun, 
" The many still must labor for the One." 

They too looked here and hoped — but hoped that all our 
mighty work for man would fail, that we should soon dis- 
solve in anarchy, or degenerate into despotism, have 
prophesied what they desired, and prayed to have their 
prophecies fulfilled, have loathed our very name and never 
ceased to vilify our principles and policy. And when at 
length, in the embittered feud on slavery — a feud which 
they had fed, and fanned, and nursed to its malign maturity 
— a fierce and terrible rebellion broke upon our land, the 
sneering coldness, and derision of the titled classes of all 
Europe, told the settled bitterness which they had always 
felt towards the great experiment of governing a nation 
by, and for the people; and all their hopes and prophecies 
were now declared to be fulfilled ; the day at last had 
come, when " Democracy was proved a failure;" the 
troublesome and vexing cry of suffering multitudes, was 
thenceforward to be stilled by the conclusive answer, " The 
" great Republic of your admiration, is a vile abortion, 
" henceforth remember, that we rule by right divine, and 
" learn to suffer, and be silent." Thus, upon every hand, the 
problem was distinctlj^ recognized, and our work was set. 
In our long years of peace, there was but little to decide 
the question; "you have not yet," we were continually 



11 

told, " had any real testing of a people's fitness for self- 
" government ; your boundless country gives abundant 
" room for labor, you have no need of taxes, you make no 
" call upon your people for self-sacrifices, you arc not even 
" governed ; wait, until some crisis when you are com- 
" pelled to these demands, and then see what a rope of 
" sand your unrestrained democracy will prove; then will 
" your laws be powerless, then will your cities flame with 
" riot, your people rage to anarchy, and your whole sys- 
" tem show itself— however beautiful in theory — a prac- 
" tical impossibility." We hardly dared to trust an answer, 
where there were so many, and so real dangers threatened, 
our hope was mainly, that our place, and territorial relations 
would never give us the occasion to bring them to the trial. 

But our work was to decide the problem. God does not 
raise up great nations without a purpose in the course of 
history ; each has its contribution to bestow, in the grand 
work of God for the advancing education, and elevation of 
the race of man. And the capacity of a people under the 
influence of Christianity to be free, and to maintain their 
freedom as a blessing, is one of the questions to which our 
nation was to give an answer ; and God sent the trial 
which was to force it to a solution ; and it was a trial 
worthy of the principle at issue. Oh ! how our nation 
shook and reeled beneath the blinding fury of that awful 
testing ! — we do not wonder that the world prepared our 
epitaph, and taunted us with our doom. But God had not 
held out the cup of promised blessing to the people of the 
earth, to dash it down in mockery. 

The very fearfulness of our trial was only to make its 
triumph all the more apparent. The storm was met, our 
Government was not a paltering hial »ility, the loyal people 



12 

did not disintegrate to anarchy, they not only bore the 
burdens first required of them, but when, in the very dark- 
est and fiercest of the struggle, the question was asked 
them, by a Presidential canvass, "Will you, "without fear, 
" and with manly hearts go toward" through this ? "Will 
" you pour out, more lavishly, your treasure ? Will you 
" lay dowai upon your nation's altar, more, and more, and 
"more, if need be, of yourselves, and sons, and fathers ?" 
The answer cam^ back in a single night, not in a voice of 
lawlessness and riot, not from streets run with blood, nor 
cities wrapped in howling conflagration, but in the silent 
majesty of a bloodless ballot-box — " So help us God we 
will." It was sublime ! History has no such scene ! The 
trial had been fearful, but the triumph was complete. A 
people could be free, and a free people could maintain 
their own self-government. 

And yet, there are those, so blind to the true stake at 
issue, that they see nothing ennobling or inspiring to 
humanity in all this, who say there is no patriotism in our 
country now, that all this is nothing, and means nothing 
but mere party politics, that all this vast uprising of a 
continent, this giving up in agony of heart their loved 
and needed, this quiet, settled purpose, calmly uttered, 
still to bear and do, is only selfish, hireling work for 
money wages. No patriotism in all this ? only money ? 
mere party bitterness ? Oh no ! Oh no ! Such have not 
read the nation's heart aright ; they have not rightly 
weighed the value of the issue, nor know^l how deep a 
hold its vital principle had fixed upon the soul of our 
people. ]^o human work can be without some selfish 
and unworthy aspect, so it has always been, is now, and 
will be to the end, but never did the pen of history, 



13 

ill any age, portray, a higher, purer love of country or 
a more glorious spirit of self-sacrifice, than fill the records 
of our country, in this its noble struggle for its own 
existence, and the universal good of man. 

The living instinct of the people felt the true import of 
the crisis, and with a zeal and patriotic fervor which 
esteemed no price too great, for the immeasurable interests 
at stake, they bore, and carried through, the contest. And 
we may now feel, although we have yet much to do 
and learn, that by the help of God, a final and decisive 
answer has been given to the question, of the capacity, and 
fitness of a people for the government of a nation. I 
know — no one can be more painfully alive to the convic- 
tion — that we, as a nation, have many and grievous faults, 
evils in our modes of thinking, ofteu great wrongs in 
our methods of administration, that we have bad men, 
unworthy legislators, many, corrupt in principle, too many, 
vile in conduct, that sin abounds in our land, and 
wickedness brings misery to multitudes, and I know — and 
with all solemn earnestness proclaim — that if we go on in 
our sins, God's judgments, soon or late, will come for our 
utter desolation. But with all our faults, and wrongs, 
when, or where, had any nation fewer ? Where one, in 
which there was less crime and misery ? England, Wales 
and Ireland with five millions less population, report in 
their courts of record, ten thousand more criminals 
annually, than we ; their own reports announce that in a 
population of twenty millions there are every year, from 
eight hundred thousand, to nearly a million and a half of 
paupers, an average of one individual in every twenty of 
the entire nation, named upon its poor list. 

"We have indeed, our sins and crimes, and in the present 



14 



suffering we would liave you recognize, a punisliment and 
discipline for our wickedness, as well as an assertion of tlie 
vital principle of our nationality, but notwithstanding, we 
have an heritage, than which, the world has never seen a 
nobler and a better. Thank God that I am an American ! 
I want no higher title, I know no higher name among the 
nations of the earth, of past or present history. There 
was a time, when to say " I am a Roman Citizen," was 
nobler honor than to be a king ; but Rome in her loftiest 
glory could give no title to her citizen, so worthy to be 
honored, as that of " an American" to-day. Rome 
claimed her greatness in making millions, slaves, and 
tributaries: America is great, in witnessing through blood 
and agony, that man, as man, is able to be free. 

The second fact linked with the name of Abraham 
Lincoln, and by which " he being dead yet speaketh," was 
established in his death. And this is, that slavery no 
longer shall retain a place among the institutions of a 
civilized community. There was, from the beginning of 
our government, a glaring contradiction between the 
principles which it avowed upon the subject of human 
rights, and human lil^erty, and its actual practice. "We 
called ourselves, and claimed it as our highest honor, that 
we were a land of liberty ; the l)irth-throe of the nation 
was the declaration, which proclaimed this as our 
fundamental principle ; we set apart, one only day, of all 
the year, as our universal and symbolic festival, and on 
that day we were to read, and teach our children, as our 
national birth-pledge, " We hold these truths to be self- 
" evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator, with 
" certain unalienable rights, that among these are life. 



15 

" liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — self-evident," 
our Revolutionary Fathers thought them, not needing 
proof, too plain to ask an argument, only to he named, to 
be acknowledged. 

JSTo wonder, that the observance of the Fourth of July 
as a national festivity had, a few years ago, well nigh died 
out, when we not only held four millions men as slaves, 
legislated for them as mere legal chattels, bought, sold, 
worked and beat them as we did our horses and our 
hounds, but boasted of it as an honor, assumed for it and 
its supporters, peculiar eminence of caste, and consideration, 
in silence acquiesced when they were vaunted as the 
chivalry of our land, and feared to talk of liberty, lest it 
might wake an echo in the bosom of a slave. What a 
comment on our national consistency and truth ! we were 
a living lie, and either our principle or our practice would, 
soon or late, one or the other have to be abandoned. 

And yet, although so flagrantly in contradiction to all 
that our Fathers held as true and right, because they had 
from motives of political ex|:>edieiicy, given slavery the 
protection of the government, in certain of its features, the 
Christian sentiment ? aud law-abiding spirit of the country 
bore the contradiction, and accepted the inconsistency; 
they maintained the institution as a part of our constitu- 
tional requirements, checked all disturbing agitation of its 
iniquities, ranked it as one of the things of Csesar, to be 
rendered unto C?esar, made compromises to favor its 
continuance, and poured the oil of soothing sympathy 
upon the angry feelings of its jealous advocates, when 
searching truths fell on the quick of their excited sensi- 
bilities. But bye and hxe it was no longer satistied 
W'th tliis; it would no longer rest content, to be regardoil 



16 

as an arrangement of political expediency; it now claimed 
to be an institution of divine ordainment, demanded that 
men should close their eyes to all its evils, moral as well 
as political, should seal their mouths against all mention of 
its enormities; And as the contradiction between the 
truths in which the nation had its origin, and the realities 
of our actual condition, pressed more and more on slavery, 
the inconsistency grew unendurable ; and slavery declared 
its purpose to strike down the Government, to divide the 
nation, and to build up another empire, in which the 
" unalienable right" of slavery, was to be the vital 
principle, and chief corner stone — " The first" says its 
most distinguished advocate " the world has ever seen, in 
which this was avowed" — and in this he was right; it was 
the first, and it will be the last. 

To carry out this hideous purpose, it arrayed itself 
against the Government in armed rebellion; and at Fort 
Sumter threw down the gauntlet of defiance. 

In this first act of mad revolt, it sealed its own destruc- 
tion; and then and there we date its fatal wound, and 
the beginning of the deliverance of the nation from its curse 
and ignomy. But it was to be borne with yet awhile, 
that it might fill the measure of its own iniquity, and 
bring upon itself the ruin, which it had thought to bring 
upon the nation. And we bore with it when it stormed 
our forts, and murdered our soldiers; we bore with it 
when it marched its troops against our Capital; and while 
its guns were thundering at the very gates of our Halls of 
Congress, they passed a resolution, to propose as an 
amendment to the Constitution, that it should never be so 
altered, as " to authorize or give Congress power to abolish 
or interfere with" slavery .n any State. AVe bore with it 



17 

in tlie long dark days of l)loody battleH; even then liad It 
been willing to return in peace, the brand would have been 
buried, and the past forgiven. And when at length the 
feeling had grown rooted in the nation's niind and heart, 
that slavery must come to an end, and its destruction was 
oiiicially decreed, still, many who desired its ruin wavered, 
hesitated, would rather have borne on, and trusted to 
the action of less stringent measures to work out the 
final consummation. 

It starved our captive soldiers, inch by inch, and day by 
day, thousands on thousands, wasting them to haggard 
skeletons, and pining them to death in hopeless agony, 
with a brutality which has no parallel upon so large a 
scale, in all the sickening records of earth's mocking 
cruelty ; and still we felt to it, and dealt to it a mercy it 
liad never shown to others. 

But when its spirit fired the brain of an assassin, to plan 
with limatic deliberation, and execute with fiendish 
calmness, the murder of the nation's president, infused the 
vengeful hate, which sought by lying fraud the chamber of 
a wounded, well-nigh dying ofiicer of State, and stabbed 
him in his helplessness, then the last drop in the cup of the 
national forbearance was wrung out; and the cry went up 
not loud and tierce, l)ut deep, and solemn, and inexorable 
as the doom of fate, that "Slavery and treason, both and 
together, were forever to be cleansed away from our land." 
And thus, what long years of war had ftuled to do, what 
right and r(>ason had not been able to a<-c<.mplish, wiiat 
else— had AiiUAUAM Lincoln lived— might liavrlK'cn only 
partially eflccted, was sealed and established in his dying 
as clearly as the doom of Babylon was written, by the hand 
of God, up(ui the palace of Belshaz/ar. 



/ 



18 

Such we believe to be the two great fiicts, one demon-, 
stratecl in the life, and the other established by the death 
of Abraham Lincoln. And none, since the Reformation 
made man's conscience free, and purified religion, will for 
a moment bear comparison in actual importance, or after 
influence, with these, in which our Martyred President, 
though '^ being dead, yet speaketh," and to the end of 
time will speak. They tell the coming ages that the 
people of the nations must be governed, not by might and 
tyranny, but right and justice; they ring the knell of 
slavery, and wipe away its curse and stain from our 
borders, and make our land in truth, as it has been in 
name, a land of Liberty : And when, in after times, the 
thoughts of men turn back to read the ways of God in 
history, the name of Abraham Lincoln will forever stand 
among the high historic landmarks of the race, to give 
undying witness to the precious truths for which our 
people struggled and for which he died. 

We turn now in conclusion, for a moment, from this 
broader Held of national, and universal history, to note 
some of the lessons, which this solemn time shoukl teach 
ourselves, as individuals. We name but two, one sugges- 
ted by the nature of our government ; the other by the 
event which has assembled us together. 

I. If we are to continue as a free people, it can be only 
as a moral, and religious people. The government of a 
free people must, of necessity, be the expression of the pre- 
vailing principles and character of those it represents. 
If our citizens are in any large proportion dishonest, or 
otherwise immoral, the ofiicers they choose, will be the 
same ; and such men always will abuse the government, 



19 

to further their own evil ])iir])oses, and in tlic end, will 
bring it to inevitable iMiin. And no nation Avill rontinue 
for a course of generations, so generally moral as to shun 
these dangers, unless there l>e a constant, and pervading 
influence of the higher power of religion. The life of our 
country all depends on this. If we fiiil here, our national 
prosperity will wither from the root ; no statesmanship can 
save us long; no present strength can give us any 
guau^ntee for our future. Here is a field where every 
individual in the nation, however humble, can contribute 
his proportion to the permanent prosperity, and life of our 
Government. God lays on every one a part of this respou- 
sibility. Mothers should train their children to tlie loftiest 
patriotism, by founding it upon lieligion, by teaching them 
that the bad man cannot be the good citizen ; and, as they 
learn to love their country above all earthly things, making 
them to feel, that they can only serve it rightly, when they 
are inspired and guided by the higher love of God. Aiul 
here too, young men, and old may work together, side by 
side, in the same good endeavor, conducing to the nation's 
health; by living as God-fearing men ; and in the practice 
of a christian life displaying those pure, and holy principles, 
wdiich at the same time are the truest ornament of 
manhood, the highest duty of the citizen, and the most 
vital need of their own present and eternal being. 

II. " God's ways are not as our ways." In the presence 
of his judgai3nt3 we can only stand in wondering silence, 
and sob, "Thy will be done."' In such dark hours, we 
feel the need of faith: and faith is our only comfort; the 
wisest man, at such a time, is only 

'• An infant crying in the night. 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry.'" 



20 r\^ 

-'^ 
All oiti' hope is tntst in God, belief tliat lie is wise iuid 

good, and " doeth all things well." And tliougli we may 

not see his plans, and cannot read his purposes, yet if we 

trust his love, — we know that, 

"Somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill"— 

and in the darkness of our ignorance, we only draw 
more closely to his side, and rest more firmly on the comfort 
of his promises. Thus would we feel, and thus would we 
have you all feel to-day ; and as we go abroad again, from 
these sad scenes, to mingle in the busy crowd of men, may 
we bear ever with us, tlie al/iding sense, that our only help 
as iiidi\i(hi{ils, or as a nation is the sustaining lore of God, 
our highest duty, heartfelt ohedieiu'C to the Saviour: to 
whom be glory, now and ever, world without end — Amen. 



LB S '12 



